Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE SPARROW-LIKE BIRDS

THE FREE-TOED PERCHING BIRDS

THE CHATTERERS

(Family Cotingida)
Perhaps none of the many curious and beautiful birds that find a home in the New World exceed some of the Chatterers, or Cotingas, in vagaries of ornamentation or brilliancy of plumage. While many of them resemble in size and appearance the members of the family last considered, the limits of size are far greater, since they range from three and a half to some eighteen inches in length, and the variations in feather and other ornamentation are far in excess. Structurally they are distinguished by having non-exaspidean tarsi, in which respect they differ from the Manakins as well as from the Tyrant Flycatchers. In the more typical Cotingas the outer toes are in most cases less united than in the Manakins. The size and shape of the bill varies considerably within the limits of the family, being strong, elongated, and compressed in some and short and broad in others; in some it is decidedly hooked. The wings in the normal Chatterers contain ten well-formed primaries, but in a small group of genera the second (ninth) primary is much shortened and reduced in size. The tail is for the most part relatively short and squared. In a majority of cases the legs and feet are rather small, as befitting the strictly arboreal life of the birds, while in other groups of genera the feet are stouter and more fitted for terrestrial life. The habits of nidification are various, some building a platform of sticks, others suspending their elaborately constructed nests from the limbs of trees, while still others deposit the eggs in holes in trees. The food of these birds consists very largely of fruits, seeds, berries, and occasional insects.
Thirty genera and nearly one hundred and fifty species of Chatterers are now known, ranging from southern Mexico to northern Argentina, and being perhaps most abundant in Central America, Amazonia, and southeastern Brazil. They are divided by Mr. Sclater and others into some six groups or subfamilies, and while all of these embrace species of more or less interest it will only be possible in the present connection to select a few of the more striking or better-known forms, which must be taken as examples of the rest. Of the members of the first group (Tilyrinm) which are distinguished at once by the abnormally reduced second external primary, little need be said beyond the fact that they are plain-colored birds, the sexes usually being very different in coloration. So, also, the members of the second subfamily (Lipaugince) are for the most part dull and unattractive birds, smaller than the last and having broader, very slightly hooked bills. With compressed and very distinctly hooked bills, on which account they have sometimes been placed with the Tyrant-birds, are the members of the third group {Attilina).

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